waterfall

This was our last weekend with a car, so to take advantage, we piled in for one final road trip. We drove up the coast to Praia do Forte, but first went north a little further to some waterfalls a friend had told us about.

The boys loved them.

Even Ju.
Not quite Angel Falls, but close enough for us.

getting ready

In preparation for the World Cup, which starts in a couple of weeks, our condominium has hung out flags and yellow and green banners.

Normally, in the States, I don't think I'd even be aware that the World Cup was going on (well, if it weren't for my husband, who is Brazilian enough to get pretty worked up about it).

I guess Ju is Brazilian enough, too, because every time he sees the flags he goes crazy and tries to grab them!

more about language

Language is something that's always fascinated me, and I've often wished I had the chance to learn a second language at an early age. So I watch with interest as Portuguese adds new shadings and tones to E. and R.'s linguistic landscape.

For example, R. sometimes makes equivalent mistakes in English and Portuguese, misplacing the noun and adjective--"I'm a boy big," he'll say; or, "Eu quero gelada agua" (instead of agua gelada).

Or E.: "There are a million of rocks on the beach."

I wouldn't go so far as to say that learning Portuguese has set back their English skills, but just as it continues to amaze me to hear them chatting away with their friends in Portuguese, I've noted these moments with surprise as well.

I don't know why. It's a small thing.

One thing that strikes me about it is that they are unaware that they're doing it, and don't notice or correct themselves.

Evidence, perhaps, of how their second language is infiltrating their psyches.

Here's more: watching them sing and dance "Rebolation," gyrating their hips, E. calling out, in all his six-year old guilelessness, "as mulhers pa frente e os homens pa tras!" (Ladies in the front, and men behind!).

butt skiing

The best use for an old piece of cardboard, according to E. and R., is what they call in Portuguese "esqui-bunda."


Butt-skiing!

baby talk

In the past few months, Ju has started saying a few words--mama, papa (for papai, daddy), Dete, car (sounds more like carro, actually).

And his favorite, pretty much all-purpose word, quer, which means want.


Here is a typical conversation with Ju:

Quer?

Quer!

Quer o que? (What do you want?)

Quer!

And so on.


(He's also taken to doing this really cute thing that E. used to do, and I'm told I did too, where he clenches his teeth in a weird grimace until his body starts shaking. But I digress.)

Dete speaks to him all morning in Portuguese, of course, and Dan speaks to him primarily in Portuguese, too, as do I, to a lesser extent.


It just seems to come more naturally with lots of words.

He plays peekaboo in Portuguese, for example (Cadé? Achou!)

There is part of me that feels a little sad about this. Why? I'm not sure. I guess it's just the inevitable pang of having to leave my baby with someone else, evidence of Dete's bond with him, which of necessity has replaced mine to some extent.

It makes him feel a little more distant, a little bit unknowable.

Mostly, though, I think it's really cool that he is learning Portuguese so well.

pillow talk

Here is R. calling his grandparents on skype.

Cute, yes, but in actual fact a pillow propped against the couch is the extent of our technological capabilities for the next month.

After both our phone and Internet were disconnected in March, we managed to get a stopgap connection that we thought would last us until the end of the year. It only worked with one of our computers, skype was iffy, and it really only worked on our bed with the computer at certain angles. But it was something.

Then last week it suddenly stopped working.


When our friend called the phone company for us, they said, oh yeah, we reconfigured our service. There's no more connection in that area.

Uh, thanks for the warning.


So for the next few weeks, don't expect any calls from us.

Except via pillow phone.

Which is almost as satisfying as the ice cream that R. and Ju like to sell in our living room.



I wish I had some real ice cream, I said when R. handed me a cone.


This is real, he said, offended.

design flaws

Yesterday Dete stayed home sick. (There's a nasty bug going around; Dan and Ju both had it last week.) So once again we were left juggling childcare.

Dan didn't have class until 10:30, so I went in first, then he brought the baby and we switched.

When I told the principal our predicament and what we were doing, he rolled his eyes.

(This from a man who last week, when he found Dan at work at 6:30 a.m., moving furniture to prepare for a school event, his shirt unbuttoned two buttons, greeted him by saying, button your shirt. That's unprofessional. Yeah, but rolling your eyes at your employees when they need a sick day, that's real professional.)

Anyway. I took R. and Ju, and we went to the mall to kill time in the air conditioning.

There's a bookstore there with a small children's area. It's both the only bookstore I've seen in Salvador, and one of the few attempts at a kid-friendly public space.


Here's R. reading a book in a cushioned tube.


Ju was pretty psyched to find a kid-sized table and chair.

The excitement lasted about three minutes, though, until he found he could engage in one of his favorite pastimes from home:


pulling things off the shelves! Not the best design for a children's corner--rows of low shelves full of cds.

Then again, design flaws here are not uncommon.

See our school's handicapped ramp below--not only is it an an incline that would send any wheelchair careening--it ends in a steep step.

Oops.

family day

Yesterday was Family Day in the elementary school. In E.'s class, the kids sang two songs, one in English and one in Portuguese.

The paparazzi was out in full force, of course.

E.'s Portuguese teacher (the one kissing her fingers, above) told me how impressed she is with his reading and writing.



Here's a note that he wrote me for Mother's Day.

It says: Iu ti amo, Iu gosto de voçe, Voçe e muito engrasado, Voçe fasa qoiesas boas.

The spelling is creative, but otherwise the Portuguese is perfect.

It means: I love you, I like you, You're very funny, You do good things.

What a great Mother's Day gift. Why do these things seem even cuter in Portuguese?

shells

On Sunday we ventured out to the beach across the street from our house. It was cool (for Salvador) and cloudy. We didn't bother with sunscreen or bathing suits or towels. Just went for a walk in the shallows to find shells.



I made my way carefully over the algae-slick rocks with Ju on my back, thinking how when we first arrived here almost a year ago, I sat under the yellow umbrellas on this beach, drinking coconuts, nursing a newborn, the glare off the sand almost blinding.

This time the overcast sky made everything seemed softer, more subdued.


When we got home, E. spent an hour washing his shells and laying them out to dry, planning to make a mosaic with them when we get back to the States.